I’m guessing most of you had no idea, but the new Movies Anywhere app that debuted last week on all Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, and Fire TV Edition televisions dropped support for the 1st generation Fire TV and Fire TV Stick shortly after it was released. The app itself is not crucial to using the digital locker service, but it’s good to see that it is once again compatible with the older Fire TV devices.

After several readers let me know that the Movies Anywhere app was no longer available on the Fire TV 1 and Fire TV Stick 1, I contacted Amazon to see if they knew why. Since a new version of the 5.2.6.0 software update was rolling out to only 1st-gen devices, I thought that it was possibly being released to fix a compatibility issue with the Movies Anywhere app. It doesn’t look like that’s the case and Amazon indicated to me that the Movies Anywhere app should be compatible with 1st-gen devices.

Whether it was due to me pointing out the incompatibility or something else, the Movies Anywhere app is now once again available to all Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, and Fire TV Edition television models, regardless of age. Amazon Appstore developers must explicitly indicate that their app is compatible with each Fire TV model individually and it’s far too easy to inadvertently forget to check all the right boxes, so it could have just been a simple oversight that resulted in the removal of the app from 1st-gen devices.

Unlike most streaming services, the Movies Anywhere app isn’t crucial to using the service on a Fire TV device, since all movies in your Movie Anywhere account will also be available on the Fire TV’s “Your Videos” screen as direct streams from Amazon Video. Regardless of whether the app is important or not, it’s reassuring to see its return to 1st-gen Fire TVs and Fire TV Sticks because if a hot new streaming service only supports newer models, it could be an indicator that app support for older devices could be coming to an end. Thankfully, that isn’t the case here.

8 comments

Downloaded the app last week on FTV1 and I could view the list of movies from the app, but was unable to play them. Today I was able to stream them directly through the app. So it appears something was fixed.
One thing I noticed is that the movie versions don’t always match across all compatible services. For example, I had an Ultraviolet copy of Mad Max Fury Road in my library. It shows correctly as the color theatrical version in the Movies Anywhere app and also on Google Play and Vudu, but on Amazon it showed up as the Black & Chrome version which is not in color.

Well when I first downloaded the Movies Anywhere app to my Fire TV, my movies wouldn’t play on the app. It said try again later. But as you pointed out the movies play in your video library. I watched Ice Age like that. Since reading this article I tried playing my movies directly from the app. It works now. I have the Fire TV box. I have the new Fire TV stick in my bedroom for the TV in there.

I am having the same issue with my new Fire TV box. I did email them and immediately got a reply saying they had received my message and their support team would contact me shortly. That was 3 days ago. I still haven’t heard from them.

Is it possible to get the APK anywhere? Not in US, but have VPN and several movies on UltraViolet and app is not available in my Amazon App store area.
Side-loaded Android TV Vudu app allows browsing but won’t play on Gen1 FireTV box.
Thanks in advance, keep up the good work!